A Brotherhood Worth Defending 2/8/42
Scripture: Acts 17: 22-31
Text: Acts 17: 26a: .. “and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth.”
“God ...... hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth.”
A man of considerable spiritual vision, who has lived most of his life in Honolulu, determined to provide a Christian camp-conference place on Kaneohe bay, across the island from the city, where Christian folk of every age and denomination and race might go. The place has become the meeting spot for young people’s gatherings, local church groups, church conferences. A great range of activity is carried on during the year. A wide variety of Christian people have built cottages on lots adjacent to the conference grounds; and they live there and work together in the common effort to improve their common life in an inter-racial fellowship. The place has been named “Kokokahi” which is a combination and contraction of the Hawaiian words meaning “of one blood.” The promoter of Kokokahi was certain that the lives of all sorts of people, whether of Caucasian, Oriental or Polynesian race, could be enriched if people would work and play and study and worship together and live for a time near each other.
Today is designated, in our fellowship, as “Race Relations Sunday.” It is hoped that, by this special emphasis, Christian people of our churches will give thoughtful attention to the spirit in which people of different colored skin can get along in understanding and appreciation of each other.
Considering the assumption of the Christian religion that God has made of one blood all the people of the earth and that in Christ “there is neither Greek nor Jew ..... barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free,” it seems strange that the matter of color and race can remain so thorny a problem to Christian people. Yet so it is. And so the problem ought to be analyzed from time to time. We ought to challenge and analyze our own prejudices, and think through the matter of Christian justice for all people.
Consider the thorniest of our own race problems in this country - the relations between black and white.
Count Cullen once wrote concerning a woman he knew:
“She even think that up in heaven Her class lies late and snores, while poor black cherubs rise at seven to do celestial chores.”
Probably none but a Negro fully understands what it is to live under the shadow of that assumption, with one’s talents and ambitions thwarted in hundreds of ways.
We are, in this spiritual respect, among the more cruel of the nations. A man, the color of whose skin happened to be black, was born in this country, but lived most of his mature life abroad. He was a painter of some note and his name was Henry O. Tanner. He lived most of his life as a sort of voluntary exile in France. As his artistic ability came to be generally recognized, he came to New York occasionally to be present at the one-man exhibition of his paintings held at a great New York gallery.
As they were walking down Fifth Avenue from that Exhibition one day, Tanner turned to Arthur B. Spingarn and said, “How beautiful New York is and how I love it.” The natural question followed: “If you love New York so much, Tanner, why don’t you live here?” The artist answered sorrowfully, “I’ve often thought of it, Spingarn, but if I did, I’d be fighting the race problem and not painting, and I think painting is my job.”
Other nations have not been so cruel, through the years, to the souls of colored people. Negroes have had a better chance to develop their abilities abroad than here in America.
It has been said that the greatest poet of Russia was Alexander Pushkin who lived and wrote more than a century ago. His masterpieces were translated into nearly every language. One of the outstanding musicians of his time was the Englishman, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. He was colored. In Brazil, a colored man, Nilo Pecanha, served that great Republic as its president in 1909 and 1910 and subsequently served as its Secretary of Foreign Affairs (equivalent to our Secretary of State.) Both positions were filled with distinction.
Long lists could be made of Negro folk who have risen, unhampered by prejudice against their color, to positions of great service in many lines of endeavor in the countries abroad.
In our own country we have a great reservoir of talent among the colored folk. Are we white folk making fair use of our position as the majority group when we circumscribe those talents with restrictions that threaten to throttle them?
I am not a devotee of the prize fight, nor a particular fan for Joe Louis. But the fact seems to be that he has shown a splendid sportsmanship in being willing to risk and defend his championship title over and over again. The last time he did so, he put his title at stake in a bout for the benefit of the Navy Relief Fund, to which he donated his whole purse - estimated at over $80,000.
Now that is a pretty good example of generosity from a vigorous and patriotic citizen. And yet, if Joe Louis wanted to join the Navy, he would have to join as a mess attendant, which is true of all Negroes. So far as I know, our Navy does not use Negroes in any other capacity. The reason given by the Secretary of the Navy is that the presence of Negroes in any other capacity would lower the morale of the Navy personnel. And yet, it probably did no damage to the morale of the navy when Negroes served as sailors on ships in the Revolutionary War or the War of 1812 or the Spanish American War.
Louis now enters the armed service of his country as a private in the army. Let it be remembered that other Negroes have paid their full quota of service and sacrifice in every major defense of American freedom. It was a Negro, we are told, who first fell in the Revolutionary War which established our political liberty.
We of the white majority still persist in blanket classification of people according to race or color. An educator like Booker Washington, a scientist like George Carver, a singer like Rowland Hayes or Marion Anderson, a fighter like Louis, a poet like Phyllis Wheatly or Lawrence Dunbar; has the same general difficulties and indignities as a cotton-picker. Restaurants will not, or dare not, serve them food. Hotels refuse them lodging. Travel in many places must be in separate cars. And so on throughout the painful categories of discrimination.
Must we forever think in terms of “lump” classification, remaining forever blind to the realities of individual worth and personality? Does a black skin house a different soul?
How carefully can we guard our hearts, during this time of strain, against indiscriminate hatred of Orientals? If we must hate (and we do hate what is evil: ruthless aggression, military treachery, cruel oppression) can we confine our hatred to those who are responsible for wrong? If we can, we shall leave the rest of our lives free for positive ends - for appreciation not only of the Filipino patriotism and the Chinese endurance, but of the loyalty of thousands of young folk of Oriental ancestry who are American citizens and who love liberty just as we do who have white skins. We may even be able to think in terms of what may be done when the war is over to build a positive standard of good between Japanese people of good will and ourselves. (Of course there are Japanese people of good will. That is one thing to keep carefully in mind even through the heat of conflict.)
Hatred is a pagan virtue, extolled only by tyrants and their henchmen. It is not a Christian virtue.
Two women of a city in this state were talking one day last December. One of them remarked, “Do you suppose that our minister will keep on telling us to love our ‘little brown brothers’ now after Pearl Harbor?” The other replied, “I expect that he will tell us to love them, even though some of them will have to be spanked.” Evidently the latter woman was right because that congregation heard an excellent sermon the following Sunday on keeping hearts in control, minds steady and hands busy during these coming months and years.
With treachery and ruthlessness, I have no sympathy - only loathing. But on matters of real difference of opinion and understanding, I am sure that it is possible to struggle without hatred. This truth was most vividly illustrated when our Civil War (or War of the States) broke out. You remember the story of two sons from a border state who went in opposite directions - one to enlist in the Union Army and one to join the Confederate forces. Their mother exclaimed fervently as they left, “God grant that you two may never meet.” They were prepared to meet in battle if necessary, yet they did not really hate each other. It is possible to oppose what we believe to be wrong; to resist it even unto death, without really hating the brother whose honest views we oppose.
The Nazis would like nothing better than to see us stirred and torn by race hatred within our land as we are across international boundaries. We owe it to our cause to do our job without any such resurgence of racial antipathies as has swept over America in the past.
We owe it to the peace, which must follow war, to go as far as possible, now, in understanding the feelings and needs of all other peoples. Christians are in the positions of dealing not only with this war but with the “next” war! If we allow ourselves the temporary luxury of indiscriminate hatred of whole peoples for the duration of the war, the hope of a just, understanding, workable peace is already lost.
The suffering Church in China has set us an ideal to cherish, when its native Christians said of their Japanese friends, “We agree to differ, but we resolve to love.” Who on earth could have a better right to say that than those who have suffered the agonies of Japanese military ruthlessness in China?
Just a word to ourselves and our friends: the Congregational Church is a tolerant church. That has been one of its leading characteristics throughout its history. There is room in it for people of very wide differences of opinion who will still agree to respect one another and to love God.
It is also a church that is more and more determined to make its spirit effective in social action; to study and understand the bases for our differences; to know and help to right injustices; to secure for all others the same positive freedom which we seek for ourselves.
I hope, fervently, that it will be a church that continues to believe in Christian missions at home and abroad, to support them with gifts, with our prayers, with our study, with understanding of all peoples of every race and nation. Believe me, the Christian missionary enterprise has done more to promote good understanding than any other venture.
Christian fellowship and help is still the chief hope of our nation and the world. Now is the strategic time to preserve and build it. A Christian brotherhood which knows no race or class distinctions is the only kind really worth defending, for it is the only one that can succeed in the long run.
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dates and places delivered:
Wisconsin Rapids, February 8, 1942